millet

1. (historical) A semi-autonomous confessional community under the Ottoman Empire, especially a non-Muslim one. [from 19th c.]Examples: "The special duties of these millet organizations are to care for the educational and other moral wants of the people […]"; "[…] in support for a common Serbian Orthodox Church, the one traditional institution permitted to exist under the Ottoman millet system which sought to rule subject peoples indirectly through their own religious hierarchies."; "Christians and Jews as People of the Book […] were organized into separate communities, or millets, defined by their common practice of the same religion, which was guaranteed as protected as long as it was primarily practised in private."historical